The present invention relates to an information storage medium and an apparatus for reproducing information from the information storage medium, and more particularly to an information storage medium suitable for storing digital audio information including musical accompaniments, so-called "karaoke", and image information relative thereto, and an apparatus for reproducing the digital audio information from the information storage medium.
A conventional apparatus for playing back pre-recorded musical accompaniments, or a musical accompaniment playback apparatus, reproduces such pre-recorded musical accompaniments by playing back information recording mediums, such as magnetic tapes, video disks, etc., on which only musical accompaniments are recorded. Such a musical accompaniment playback apparatus includes an amplifier connected to a microphone and a loudspeaker, and mixes vocal signals supplied from the microphone with signals of reproduced musical accompaniments, amplifies the mixed signals, and supplies the amplified signals to the loudspeaker to produce audible sounds.
There are known audio-visual musical accompaniment playback apparatuses capable of reproducing musical accompaniments stored in video disks (VD) or compact disks (CD) and, while at the same time, displaying images on graphic display units.
When a user of such an audio-visual musical accompaniment playback apparatus sings a desired song to a corresponding musical accompaniment reproduced from an information storage medium, i.e., a VD or a CD, words of the song are displayed on a graphic display unit immediately before the portion of the musical accompaniment which corresponds to those words is reached.
In a VD or a CD, character information which represents words of songs are recorded in superimposed relationship to video information, animation image information, or still image information. Therefore, since the words of songs are displayed in time with the recorded pictures, the display of the words of songs cannot be controlled independently of the pictures.
It would be highly convenient for the user to adjust the speed at which character image is to be displayed on a graphic display unit independently of the pictures, be able to select words of songs from a Japanese version to an English version or display a timing to start to sing songs by switching.